


Brother

by Tousled_Sky



Series: Atlantis [5]
Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Childhood Memories, Gen, Grief/Mourning, References to Depression, Sibling Bonding, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 20:28:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10726620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tousled_Sky/pseuds/Tousled_Sky
Summary: "It reminds her of the night of the funeral - when she stood outside, hand-in-hand with her sister, watching their lanterns rise higher and higher into the night sky. But Mairu's eyes fell from Tokyo's skies to it's streets, bright with headlights, full of life. Mairu found herself scowling in anger - it didn't seem fair that the world could just carry on as usual when Izaya was dead." Tales of the eldest Orihara sibling and his twin sisters.





	Brother

**Author's Note:**

> And the Orihara twins get in on the sadness.  
> For as much shit as these two rattle off to Izaya about hating him, I think they really do love him. And they would miss him.  
> Hope you enjoy, loves.

"Why, is it always stormy weather? Brother, tell me, if it all gets better? Why did you leave? Why did you die? You finally made your ~~brother~~ sisters cry - I hope you're watching over us tonight." -Falling in Reverse, Brother.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

To be sure, the Orihara trio had never been the three musketeers. But they hadn't been unkind to one other, either. Eight years was a big age gap, of course. But Izaya still spent time with them - apparently even a bit when they were babies, although of course Mairu didn't remember that.

Instead, her first vivid memory of Izaya playing with them was when she was five years old. She and Kururi were were five years old and in the bath, their mother helping them clean up, when the house phone rang. She hurriedly got up, answering the phone and putting it on hold for a moment, then calling for Izaya. Mairu remembers hearing her brother and mother speaking, their voices muted by the distance of the hall, but her mother obviously wanting her thirteen-year-old son to go keep an eye on the two and make sure they didn't drown while she took the phone call.

Izaya had helped them a bit grudgingly at first, but had warmed to them as they threw handfuls of bathwater first at each other, and then at him. He had fake-glowered and splashed them back, laughing when they giggled under the spray.

He had ended up helping them shampoo their hair, arranging the strands to stick straight up like mohawks, which delighted the twins to no end. Encouraged by their giggles and happy shrieks, Izaya poured more shampoo into his hands, swirling it into the water to make bubbles, the fixing them to the kindergartner's faces as bubble beards, which only made the two of them more gleeful. Most of the details are hazy, of course, since Mairu was so young at the time, but several things she remembers vividly - Izaya's russet eyes crinkled at the corners on his thirteen-year-old face, Kururi shrieking with joy when their brother playfully splashed her with the sudsy water, their mother smiling from the doorway - likely hoping that this was the start of a strong bond before Izaya and the twins.

And for a year or two, it was. In his early middle school years, Izaya spent a lot of time with his sisters. They often spent afternoons in the living room, building forts made of not only cushions and pillows, but of entire furniture pieces. It became routine for Izaya to push the couch across the hardwood floor of the living room as the two girls sat on it as it slid, playing that they were captains on a ship, only for it to become a fortress wall minutes later.

Pillow forts weren't the only ways they passed the time. The girls were constantly begging for "airplane rides", where Izaya would plant the soles of his feet against their stomachs and hoist them in the air horizontally, holding their little hands in his own, which were somewhere between those of a child and an adult's. They would often play hide-and-seek in the apartment, small though it was. Izaya almost always found them, but Mairu once beat him by climbing into the closet and attaching herself to the clothes rack like a sloth on a branch, safely hidden behind the shirts and jackets. Kururi once beat Izaya by somehow closing herself in a dresser drawer - she had had to call for him to get her out after he had given up. Mairu would have panicked in such an enclosed space, but Kururi didn't seemed affected, beyond her satisfaction at beating her brother.

\--------------------------------------------------------------

Though the Orihara siblings were close for a few years, when Izaya got further into his middle school years, he started to grow apart from his sisters. When Izaya started to spend more time after school at his biology club with his friend - with Shinra - he not only had less time to spend with the two, but he also started to change. He began acting like he cared not about individual people, but rather, as humanity as an abstract concept - a concept that fascinated him to no end. Mairu doesn't particularly remember the transformation in steps - just that Izaya became more and more distant from them as time went on.

But though it may have seemed, then, that Izaya's twin sisters would only be two more humans out of seven billion to him, it goes without saying to Mairu that they were always more to him. Because even though their time spent together was less often and more sporadic, it was still time spent together. And it was always treasured - by Mairu, by her  
sister, and, she could tell, by Izaya.

Even after he graduated high school and got busier than ever, after moving out and starting work, he still found time for his little sisters. Around once a month or so, Izaya would show up and they would do something together.  
  
It was almost always on a weekend, but besides that, there was no predictability to it - it was always out of the blue. For example, Mairu and Kururi once came out the gates of their middle school on a Friday and found Izaya waiting outside the gates. After they were done hugging him (aka squeezing the life out of him like two boa constrictors in school uniforms), he took them them to a restaurant. They stopped at it on without even going home first, their backpacks on the floor under the booth as they spent about an hour and a half chattering happily with their brother over their early dinner. But it was only a one-time thing - random but awesome.

\-------------------------------------------------------------

Though Izaya sometimes met them in public, he was far more likely to climb in through their windows after their mother thought they were asleep. He never came in through the door, though it would be easy enough for the sisters to discretely get him in without their mother noticing. No, he preferred to clamor up the fire escape that criss-crossed up the side of the building and use the window as his entrance.

One particular memorable time, when Mairu opened the window at the taps on the glass, her brother hoisted a duffle bag through the window before climbing in over the sill after it. Mairu had kicked it curiously, asking him jokingly, "What's in the bag, nii-san? Drugs?"

"May as well be." Izaya replied, throwing a brightly-colored bag at her chest. Mairu caught it, reading the Katakana splashed across the package, a manic smile threatening to spill right off her face.

"Nii-san, gummy candies? Not only are these my favorites, but just half a bag of these will keep me up all night - they're pure sugar." She giggled. Izaya gave her a half-grin.

"I know. And both of those reasons are why I bought ten packages." He answered, throwing a handful more at her. Mairu tried not to squeal, lest she alert their mother - last time the eldest Orihara in the household had found her son in her daughters room, she chased him out with a broom. A bit of an extreme reaction, in Mairu's opinion, considering they weren't even doing anything wrong - he had been showing them the Llamas with Hats series, and their mom had acted like he had been showing them porn.

(It wasn't until she was much older that Mairu would realize that her mother didn't only want Izaya to not show them videos of anything - llamas or porn - but she didn't want him anywhere near his sisters, ever. And it would take even more years for Mairu to understand that her mother didn't want her to become like Izaya, and the reasons for this)

None of that mattered to Mairu right then, though. Right then she was just a twelve-year-old with two fistfuls of candy bags and a brother who was pulling PG-13 (scandalous!) dvds out of his bag.

"Well, neither of you are are thirteen, and there's no parents for the "parental guidance" part of the rating. Should we still watch these?" He teased.

"Yeah! Let's be felons!" Kururi had exclaimed with uncharacteristic enthusiasm, making both of her siblings startle, and then laugh.  
  
Maybe watching the dvd intended for children a year older than the two girls were wasn't a felony, but it was certainly what ended up happening. The three of them had stayed up half the night, watching a dvd trilogy, eating pure chemicals in the form of gummy candy and drinking fruit-flavored water. The subtitles on the movies might have been so-so, but the story was immersive. But, even while drawn into the fantasy world, Mairu was pleasantly aware of her brother next to her the whole night, his shoulder against her own, alive and warm and there.

When Mairu woke up the next morning, the title screen for the third Lord of the Rings movie - the one they had fallen asleep during - was looping on their TV that sat on the dresser. The carpet was still - it seemed that in the night, she had knocked over her bottle of strawberry water by her bedside. Gummy bears were strewn across the bed from the now-empty bag that had been only half-empty when she fell asleep, one of her hands still clutching the ripped plastic. In the other hand was that of her still-sleeping brother, which she had fallen asleep also holding (because she was twelve, and Golum was scary, and holding her brother's hand helped quell her fear).

That was one of the only times she had seen Izaya sleep. He slept so actively - hair mused, mouth open, limbs splayed, a lot of shifting around. He looked very much alive in his sleep.

How ironic, now that he was asleep forever - and very much not alive.

\----------------------------------------------------------------

Izaya didn't always come in through the window to stay. On quite a few occasions, he climbed up the fire escape only to take the two girls with him. Mairu remembered the first time it happened - a tapping on the glass startled Mairu from where she was playing on her phone. The startlement quickly turned to excitement as she recognized the pattern - tap, tap-tap-tap-tap, tap tap. She looked over at her sister, who had just as big as smile on her face as Mairu.

That was the pattern Izaya always used.

Mairu jumped off her bed, moving excitedly over the window. As expected, Izaya's face was grinning behind the glass that was now covered in his breath and different shapes and patterns that he had drawn. Mairu unlocked the window and threw it open.

"C'mon in Nii-san. Mom's doing something that doesn't involve paying attention to us, like every night, so you're good - she won't find you."

Izaya perched on the edge of the window, legs dangling into their room. "As much as I'd love to hang out with you guys in here - nice new look, by the way", Izaya said, gesturing to the bedroom that the twins had recently spent an afternoon re-imagining and re-arranging, "I actually had something else in mind."

"What would that be?" Mairu asked. Izaya grinned.

"A night out on the town."

Twenty minutes later, the soles of Mairu's sneakers were hitting the pavement as she dropped down from the bottom rung of the fire escape to the pavement below. Mairu was next, and Izaya after her.

They walked through the streets of Tokyo in the dark, talking and laughing. Izaya got them a taxi and tipped the driver extra to play some CD of stupid pop songs that he handed him.

They ended up at a diner that Mairu had never even known existed. They were ushered to a back-row corner booth by a waitress. Izaya had sat down first, and then his sisters had slid in on either side of him, grinning at this unexpected, but happy, outing.

"Order whatever you guys want." Izaya had said simply, with a knowing look, as Mairu and Kururi grinned at each other from over the dessert menus.

Mairu had gotten a stack of chocolate chip pancakes, Kururi had gotten an extra-large banana split with Neapolitan ice cream, and Izaya had ordered a...something french that Mairu couldn't pronounce. Whatever it was, it was sweet and light when Mairu reached over and stole a forkful from Izaya's plate. In retaliation, he reached over and took one her pancakes. While his attention was on Mairu trying to deter his fork by deflecting it with her own, like sparring with tiny swords, Kururi stole more of his french dessert for herself, holding her finger to her grinning lips with her eyes locked on those of her twin.

All in all, they had eaten as much of each other's desserts as they had of their own, making meme references and just generally fucking around for almost an hour at the all-night little diner. Izaya left a generous tip for the tired-looking waitress, and had walked to the street with his sisters flanking him, hailing a cab.

Mairu had fallen asleep on the ride home, needing Izaya to wake her to climb the fire escape. He lifted both of them up onto the rungs before getting a running start, sprinting six feet up the nearby wall and pushing backwards off the bricks to grab the lowest rung. Both the girls cheered in whispers and clapped mutedly, lest they wake up the tenants sleeping just inside the window of this floor.

After Izaya's death, Mairu tried time and time again to remember what that diner was called, what street it was on, trying to find it again. Trying to find a piece of Izaya again.

She never could. It was just another business in Tokyo - another drop in the ocean. Existing only in her mind - in her fond memories of her brother.

\-------------------------------------------------------------

Mairu had always known her brother was into some shady shit. But it never bothered it like some people might think it would - because even if he was an informant who worked for the Yakuza, he was also Izaya.

He was the man who had taken Mairu and Kururi to the mall's Forever 21 and tried on the same skirt style that they had, laughing along with them as he spun in circles to fan the cloth out. He was the boy who sat with her at the kitchen table and went over flash cards with her over and over, until she had the times tables up through twelve memorized for a test in third grade. The one who had let her wear his coat in the early December evening as snowflakes drifted down, watching her in gentle, affectionate amusement as the fur hood that framed his face so well flopped down to cover her eyes completely.

He was her brother.

So no, his profession didn't bother Mairu. Or, more accurately, it didn't make her think anything less of him - it bothered her in that it made her worry about him, about his safety. After all, he would have a limp sometimes when he came to visit, and bruises from fights were common. One time he showed up in their room with black-violet marks around his neck in the shape of Heiwajima Shizuo's hands.

So she worried for him. But whenever she expressed her concerns to him, he dismissed her fears with laughter and a hand against her scalp, ruffling her hair. "Don't worry so much about me." he would chide her lightly. "Your Nii-san can take care of himself."

She'd believed him, too.

But he hadn't been able to. Not that night.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------

  
Mairu finds out from the news.

It's all over the television, the news about a fight in Ikebukuro, the screen showing the blue-and-red light of emergency vehicles splashing over the pavement, sweeping over the crowd, distorted by the irregular mass of bodies. And instantly, she knew. She knew it was Izaya - she had a sick feeling in her stomach.

But the news of his death comes as such a shock because even though she had a feeling that Izaya was in the fight, she hadn't gotten the feeling that he'd died.

It seems...impossible, for such a long time. To her, Izaya had always been so invincible. He was older than them, and so much more mature, so much an adult when they were children. He was Mairu looked up to, who she aspired to be like (much to her mother's distress).

She, and Kururi as well, end up with so many absences they have to repeat the tenth grade. Mairu didn't care. School didn't matter - not anymore. She couldn't bring herself to care about abstract maths or biology concepts now - it all seemed so trivial, so stupid, in the face of such a thing. How can Mairu care about understanding physics formulas while she can hardly understand how the world's still turning while her big brother is dead?

It reminds her of the night of the funeral - when she stood outside, hand-in-hand with her sister, watching their lanterns rise higher and higher into the night sky. But Mairu's eyes fell from Tokyo's skies to it's streets, bright with headlights, full of life. Mairu found herself scowling in anger - it didn't seem fair that the world could just carry on as usual when Izaya was dead.

Even more than that, it didn't seem possible.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Mairu can't stand to be alone, now.

Whenever she's alone, all she can think of is Izaya - and it's not just memories in her thoughts. The memories are good - she wouldn't mind being alone with her memories of Izaya.

Instead, her time alone fills her mind with all the warning signs that she should have seen. She's reminded how she'd hunted down Izaya's secretary Namie (whom she'd always suspected of also being Izaya's girlfriend) in the weeks after the funeral. She'd found her and asked her the questions she'd memorized from all the times they'd intruded into her mind - questions about Izaya's state in the months before his death.

It's not easy to hear.

Of course Mairu can see it now, when it's too fucking late - twenty-twenty in retrospect, as they say. She sees in the photographs she took of the trio around that time; see how Izaya was starting to look worse, health-wise, than in photographs a year before that. He was thinner, with his favorite clothes becoming loose on him. The dark skin under his eyes hinted that he had been losing sleep. It looked, in a nutshell, like he hadn't been taking care of himself.

Mairu realizes now that he probably didn't think he was worth taking care of.

Mairu knows about depression, but she would have never thought that the boy who gave "airplane rides" to her and her sisters, who pushed the two across the living room on a couch, would be depressed. That the man who talked so big about himself would have self-esteem issues.

Mairu doesn't want to play "hate-the-messenger", but she does resent Namie - not for telling her, but for knowing. For knowing about Izaya's issues - his self-loathing, self-control issues, depression, loneliness - for so long while Mairu didn't and not doing anything about it.

She doesn't attack Namie for it, though. She can tell she's sorry.

Still, Mairu can't easily forgive Namie.

\--------------------------------------------------------------

Kururi helps. Talking about Izaya with Kururi helps - discussing the fun times they had together as children, talking about their adventures as teenagers, until one of them inevitably begins crying and starts her twin crying as well. But crying with Kururi wasn't like crying alone - it was easier, and it was healing rather than painful. Even when they're not talking - just sitting there together helps. She'll go out on the fire escape and sit with Kururi in the early morning, slide her legs through the railings and her fingers through her sisters, and rub her thumb over her twin's knuckles as they watch the morning paint the city a million different colors.

Writing helps. She goes through two diaries in the course of as many weeks - one's hot pink, the cover made of a fuzzy fabric that feels nice against her finger, and has a lock that she never bothers with. The other a simple spiral-bound notebook with "Journal" stamped across the front.

She fills the pages of both of them with letters that she'll never send. She writes dozens of letters - mostly to Izaya, but there are other recipients as well. She writes to her past self, to her mother, to Shizuo, to God.

She burns the journals one night over the bathroom sink and lets the running water wash the still-warm ashes out of her sink, out of her sight, out of her life.

Karate helps too. It lets her focus on her form rather than her thoughts - it serves as a welcome distraction.

At least, for a while. Until one Tuesday during practice, when they move to sparring. Mairu takes a water break and glances over to the mat just in time to see Kururi, sparring with a boy taller than herself, lift both her arms to block a blow to her face.

Mairu hasn't seen any of the multiple videos of the fight that are online, but it's so talked-about, the discussion so unavoidable everywhere from the streets to the web, that she still knows it well enough to describe it frame-by-frame and from multiple angles. She knows exactly what happened; and for a moment, she sees Izaya In Kururi's place. The white of the uniform flashes to black fabric trimmed with white fur, with both his arms lifted to block a hit in the attack that killed him.

Karate doesn't help after that.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------

She can't hate Shizuo.

She knows how her brother was about Shizuo. When Izaya came to visit them, and the topic of Heiwajima Shizuo arose, her normally smiling brother turned suddenly very scary.

She knows everything about the fight. And she knows that Izaya started it, because of course he did. So she knows that Shizuo isn't to blame - not entirely. Shizuo only shoulders half the blame.

That isn't to say she's not angry at him - oh good god, is she ever. She's furious at him - she rages against him in her mind, in her pages of letters that eventually burn before her mirror. She's also angry at Izaya, for starting the fight with someone as dangerous as Shizuo; for taking such stupid risks.

When she thinks about why Izaya did it - why he took those risks - Namie's words fit like a puzzle piece. It was because he didn't care enough about himself to worry about protecting himself.

It makes Mairu even more angry at Izaya - because maybe he didn't care about himself, but she cared about him so much - she thought the world of him. She loved him, she loves him.

But if she can't hate Shizuo, then there's not a chance in hell that she could hate Izaya. She can't hate her brother - she can't and she would never want to.

She just misses him.


End file.
